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Betty Buckley.

Article Excerpt
This summer you performed for several nights at the Blue Note jazz club, in New York. It's easy for all of us out here in the world who've seen you act for so many years in TV shows and movies and plays to forget that you're first and foremost a singer. And you've been one since you were a kid growing up in Fort Worth.

Oh, yeah. My two great loves are music and horses. My mother had been a singer and dancer but gave that up when she married my father. My aunt was a dance teacher, so I studied dance with her when I was three. I first started singing when I was two, in church. In elementary school I sang in the Methodist church choir and in the all-city chorus. I remember them putting me on the back row and telling me to blend in because I was so loud. And then, when I was eleven, my mom took me to Casa Manana [the legendary Fort Worth theater]. I saw what musical theater was, and I was like, "There's a place for me."

Was there any doubt in your mind back then that this was going to be your chosen path?

When I was eleven and saw the Bob Fosse number "Steam Heat" in The Pajama Game, I had an epiphany. I didn't know it was an epiphany at the time, but that's what it was--a clarity of consciousness informing me that this is what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life.

And your parents were supportive?

My mom was. She'd take me around to these different talent shows, and she'd sneak me out of the house for my dance lessons, because my father was very opposed to it.

Why's that?

He was from South Dakota. My theory is that in South Dakota, performers were like dance hall girls, you know? That was the only exposure he'd had to it, so he really thought it was not a good profession; a woman's place was to be married and in the home and to have children. He also stressed education. My grades always had to be really good. He thought [show business] was a poor use of my mind. He felt that it was a superficial profession. He was the only person in town who didn't want me to do it. Everybody else was supportive of my talent and wanted me to have the opportunity to go to New York. There would be great fights between my parents about this, but my morn won....

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